What it is
Customers often send a photo of a car they saw, a voice message instead of typing, or a document. Aria handles each of them on Messenger, Instagram, WhatsApp and text messages (MMS):
- Photos: Aria can look at a photo and say which car it seems to be (make, model, rough years, colour and body type). QualiFlow then checks your Inventory for that car straight away, so her answer starts with what you really have: "That looks like a … We have …". If the exact car isn't in stock, she says what is different about the closest cars you have (instead of just "no exact match") and offers to let the customer know when one comes in. When she isn't sure what the car is, she asks one short question to confirm.
- Price questions: "What's the price?" about a car is a stock question. Aria gives the recorded price of each matching car from your Inventory, or says no price is recorded and offers to have the team confirm it. It does not open a finance case or ask for a phone number or email. A lease, a monthly payment, a loan, a rate, credit approval or a trade-in value is still a finance question for your team.
- Voice messages: QualiFlow writes out what the customer said. Aria answers the words, and your team reads the transcript under the player in the Inbox.
- Documents and files: Aria knows a file arrived (its name and type) and passes it to your team when a person needs to look at it.
- Shared contacts, phone numbers, links and locations: they arrive as text in the conversation, so Aria never asks the customer to "resend the attachment".
Website chat and web forms don't take files yet.
How to use it
- Connect the channel in Settings → Connections. Nothing else needs to be switched on.
- Keep Inventory up to date. Aria's answer to "Is this car available?" with a photo comes only from your recorded stock.
- In the Inbox, open the conversation: photos show as pictures, voice messages show a player with the Transcript under it, documents show their name with Download, and a contact card shows its details.
- If a file shows a reason instead of the file, select Retry when it is offered, or ask the customer to send it again.
What the data means
"Looks like". Aria's reading of a photo is a best guess, never a certainty. She says what the car looks like and asks the customer to confirm when she is not sure.
People and number plates. Aria never identifies or describes people in a photo, and never reads number plates or other personal details from a picture or a file.
Cost. Looking at a photo and writing out a voice message are AI work. They count toward the workspace's AI usage like Aria's replies, and stop when AI is off or this month's AI limit is reached. A photo is looked at once; asking about it again costs nothing more. In Settings → Billing, photo and voice-message work is recorded as its own kind of Aria usage.
Transcript notes. "This recording format can't be transcribed" means the phone sent an older format (AMR); play it to hear the message. "Not transcribed" means AI was off or the monthly AI limit was reached when it arrived.
Possible issues and fixes
A customer's photo says it wasn't saved
Symptom: The Inbox shows "Image couldn't be saved" with a reason such as "The provider pointed to an unexpected address".
Why: QualiFlow downloads files only from the channel's own media addresses. The download was refused or the link expired before it could be saved.
Fix: Select Retry. Files refused this way are also tried again automatically after a QualiFlow update. If the provider no longer has it, ask the customer to send it again.
How to check: The photo shows as a picture and Aria can talk about it.
A voice message has no transcript
Symptom: The player shows, but no Transcript under it.
Why: The format can't be transcribed, AI was off or at its monthly limit, or the transcription service didn't answer.
Fix: Play the message. Check AI usage and the AI switch in Settings → Go-live checklist.
How to check: The next voice message shows its transcript.
A screenshot or AI-made picture was refused as unsafe
Symptom: A PNG picture (often a screenshot or an image made with an AI tool) showed "This file was blocked" even though it is a normal picture.
Why: Before 18 Oct 2026, the safety scan read the text that screenshot and AI image tools write inside a PNG (its description, colour profile and content credentials) and mistook it for code.
Fix: Ask the customer to send it again. The scan now skips those description parts of a PNG; anything hidden elsewhere in the file is still blocked.
How to check: The picture shows in the Inbox and Aria can talk about it.
Aria guessed the wrong car from a photo
Symptom: Aria named a different model than the one in the picture.
Why: The photo was dark, partial or showed a rare variant, so her guess had low confidence.
Fix: Take over the conversation, or let the customer correct her; Aria then checks stock for the car they name.
How to check: Aria's next answer uses the corrected car.
